Plutocracy

Plutocracy is a government by the wealthy. Ploutos was Greek for "wealth", and Plouton, or Pluto, was one of the names used for the Greek god of the underworld, where all the earth's mineral wealth was stored. So a plutocracy governs or wields power through its money. The economic growth in the U.S. in the late 19th century produced a group of enormously wealthy plutocrats. Huge companies like John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil gained serious political power, and Rockefeller was able to influence lawmakers in states where his businesses operated. For this reason, it was said in 1905 that Ohio and New Jersey were plutocracies, not democracies. The U.S. Constitution was written by white men predominantly of the propertied class. For their time, the steps they took were heroic and progressive. They brought an end to hereditary monarchy and introduced the separation of church and state to end theocracy — both exceptional accomplishments for their time. The original Constitution, however, enshrined the power of white males of property in the institutions of a plutocracy, a system of rule by people of wealth. It specifically sanctioned slavery and gave no rights to women, Native Americans, or people of color. The real story of the United States is that of an empire ruled as a plutocracy that has resisted demands from ordinary people for recognition of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness with often violent means. The story that those who wrote the U.S. Constitution acted out of a passionate belief in the right of every person to life, liberty, and justice for all and gave us governing institutions that embody the highest expression of these democratic ideals is a leading example of an Empire fiction. As is characteristic of such fictions, it clouds our ability to see and thus to reach for unrealized possibilities of Earth Community well within our means. Every bit of the land our nation occupies, from that of the original thirteen colonies, to that acquired during the Westward expansion, was taken by force and deceit from Native Americans who were impoverished as a result and whose treaty rights continue to be ignored with alarming regularity. It took a civil war to amend the Constitution to prohibit slavery and continued struggle to extend the vote to people of color. African Americans suffer the consequences of the enslavement of their ancestors to this day. Women, even white women of property, didn’t get the vote until 1920 and remain significantly underrepresented in political office. Even now we have no assurance that every vote will be properly recorded and counted. Our current economy is accurately described by investment advisors and marketing consultants as a "plutonomy," a combination of the terms "plutocracy" and "economy." It refers to an economy in which income growth is confined to those at the top of the wealth pyramid. They use the concept as a guide to framing profitable investment and marketing strategies. The is the mirror opposite of economic democracy, which is an essential foundation of political democracy, both foundational to the Living Democracy of Earth Community. Bringing democracy to these United States, begins with a new story that acknowledges we have never had it. In the words of Frances Moore Lappe, “To save the democracy we thought we had, we must take democracy to where it’s never been.” Plutocracy literally means rule by the rich. “Rule” can have various shades of meaning: those who exercise the authority of public office are wealthy; their wealth explains why they hold that office; they exercise that authority in the interests of the rich; they have the primary influence over who holds those offices and the actions they take. These aspects of “plutocracy” are not exclusive. Government of the rich and for the rich need not begun directly by the rich. Also, in some exceptional circumstances rich individuals who hold powerful positions may govern in the interests of the many, e.g. Franklin Roosevelt. The United States today qualifies as a plutocracy – on a number of grounds. Let’s look at some striking bits of evidence. Gross income redistribution upwards in the hierarchy has been a feature of American society for the past decades. The familiar statistics tell us that nearly 80% of the national wealth generated since 1973 has gone to the upper 2%, 65% to the upper 1 per cent. Estimates as to the rise in real income for salaried workers over the past 40 years range from 20% to 28 %. In that period, real GDP has risen by 110% – it has more than doubled. To put it somewhat differently, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the top earning 1 percent of households gained about 8X more than those in the 60 percentile after federal taxes and income transfers over a period between 1979 and 2007; 10X those in lower percentiles. In short, the overwhelming fraction of all the wealth created over two generations has gone to those at the very top of the income pyramid. That pattern has been markedly accelerated since the financial crisis hit in 2008. The argument won’t wash, though, for three reasons. First, there is no reason to think that such a process has accelerated over the past five years during which disparities have widened at a faster rate. Second, other countries (many even more enmeshed in the world economy) have seen nothing like the drastic phenomenon occurring in the United States. The plutocrats’ compulsive denigration of the poor, the ill and the dispossessed is perhaps the most telling evidence of status obsession linked to insecurity that is at the core of their social personality. They find it necessary to stigmatize the latter as at best failures, at worst as moral degenerates – drug addicts, lazy, parasites, in part to highlight their superiority and in part to blur the human consequences of their rapacity. Behavior of this kind is the antithesis of what could be the cultivated image of the statesman of commerce – even though they pay a price in public esteem. They also pay in price in terms of the other aspect of their own self-image. Second, Americans have a craving to believe in their own virtue – as well as to have others recognize it. The perverse pride in beating the system cannot in and of itself compensate for the feeling that you’re a bad guy. Blank Fein again: “I have been doing the Lord’s work.” No one laughs in public – so I’m right about that. Dimon swaggering through the Council On Foreign Relations or Brookings with the huddled masses in his audience – and on the dais – beaming their adulation as they bask in his fame and thirst for his wisdom on the great affairs of the world. Perhaps, his views on whether the BRICS can rig the LIBOR rate with the connivance of the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve – or ignore regulatory reporting rules when they threaten to reveal a